As wireless communication becomes more and more popular at offices, homes, schools, etc., different wireless technologies and applications may work in tandem to meet the demand for computing and communications at anytime and/or anywhere. For example, a variety of wireless communication networks may coexist to provide a wireless environment with more computing and/or communication capability, greater mobility, and/or eventually seamless roaming.
In particular, wireless personal area networks (WPANs) may offer fast, short-distance connectivity within a relatively small space such as an office workspace or a room within a home. Wireless local area networks (WLANs) may provide broader range than WPANs within office buildings, homes, schools, etc. Wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs) may cover a greater distance than WLANs by connecting, for example, buildings to one another over a broader geographic area. Wireless wide area networks (WWANs) may provide the broadest range as such networks are widely deployed in cellular infrastructure. Although each of the above-mentioned wireless communication networks may support different usages, coexistence among these networks may provide a more robust environment with anytime and anywhere connectivity.
Some wireless networks, such as WMAN, may employ a communication technique known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). In MIMO, a network node such as a base station or a subscriber station may communicate with another node using multiple antennas. The multiple antennas may be used to communicate with the other node using multiple spatial channels. There are at least two types of MIMO systems, an open loop MIMO system and a closed loop MIMO system. In an open loop system, the transmitting node may transmit data signals to the receiving node without first receiving feedback information from the receiving node to facilitate such communication. In contrast, in a closed loop system, the transmitting node may receive from the receiving node feedback information prior to transmitting data signals to the receiving node. Such feedback information may better facilitate the transmission of the data signals to the receiving node.
The feedback information provided back to the transmitting node may include channel quality indicators (CQIs). Typically, one CQI is provided for one spatial channel. A CQI may specify a modulation coding scheme (MCS) that may further indicate two parameters, a modulation level and a forward error correction (FEC) code rate (herein “code rate”), which the transmitting node may use in order to transmit a spatial stream of signals (herein “stream of signals”) via the corresponding spatial channel. Note that in other instances, a CQI may specify other types of channel quality indicator such as a signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR), a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and so forth, of the spatial channel associated with the CQI. Unfortunately, feedback such as CQIs may consume large amounts of the feedback bandwidth, thus reducing the overall performance of the wireless network.